Video Game Workout

Zap Your Flab

You thought the Wii was exhausting? That was nothing

October 19, 2010

We had a deal, me and video games. I bought into their ridiculous fantasies and was able to defend Earth from thousands of space invaders, or hop across traffic as a frog. In return, they respected the fact that the entirety of my physical prowess existed in my right hand. It's the same deal I cut with my libido. Except, er, with different fantasies.

Now that deal is broken. Video games want to trick me into exercising. Nintendo started it with the Wii, for which I had to use my entire arm. And now Kinect, the new Xbox attachment (out November 4), has no controller and requires me to lean, throw out my hands, and jump—jump!—to play. How am I supposed to play a game for 16 hours straight if I have to jump? How am I supposed to play it for 16 minutes? Do I want to accomplish all this moving around on my tiny living room rug? Why not do it in a space designed for moving around? Like outside, wherever that is.

The first time I saw young girls jumping on a pad in an arcade as they played Dance Dance Revolution, I thought: It's over. And this wasn't just about being stripped of a sedentary lifestyle. We men had lost our dominance over the Internet, high school sports, and drinking, and now video games were no longer ours to be manly with. And Kinect has the nerve to take photos of us in action and post them on Facebook. You want embarrassing? Look at yourself playing UFC Trainer, all alone in a triangle choke.

But weirdly, I'm more excited about Kinect than any game technology since Pong. Yes, fine, it's dragging me off the couch, but I'm giving in and you should too: In exchange it's giving us back our video games. Full-body movement means a more fully consuming world of action, competition, and rules, and an infinite amount of statistics. It's the same reason we love watching sports. And if we could control actual NFL players during a game, we would happily jump the whole time.

That's assuming you can jump with nachos in your hand. I guess that's why the rug is there.

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